[conlang_learners] Submission of conlangs

[Padraic Brown]

--- On Wed, 6/17/09, Sai Emrys <conlangs at saizai.com> wrote:

> From: Sai Emrys <conlangs at saizai.com>
> Subject: Re: [conlang_learners] Submission of conlangs
> To: conlang_learners at conlang.org
> Date: Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 9:01 PM
> On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 5:59 PM, Sai
> Emrys<conlangs at saizai.com>
> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 4:45 PM, Brett Williams<mungojelly at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> Anyway, I don't think people wanting to list their
> own languages is a
> >> problem.  In fact now that I think about it,
> that's part of what I
> >> wanted to see from this project in the first
> place: People who would
> >> like other people to learn their conlangs, coming
> out and saying so,
> >> drawn out of the woodwork by the temptation of the
> prize.
> >
> > IMHO: Go easy on this aspect.
> 
> Also: You don't want people in the discussion who are here
> to
> *promote* a language, rather  than talking *as
> learners* about what
> language they think the group ought to learn.
> 
> There's a huge difference in perspective between those two.
> Basically,
> if someone's only going to be into it if their
> favored/created
> language is chosen, they should just shut up for everyone's
> sake.

Excellent points. For my part, I don't really care whether I "win the prize" or not. I didn't think this was supposed to be a contest with winners and losers and notions of better and worse conlangs. My concern was mostly with what seemed to be a bias against certain languages from the start, and also with the idea of third-party nomination (that could be construed as something more akin to a popularity contest). Those worries at least seem to be allayed.

As I understand it, it's simply a means to get people (not necessarily conlangers, mind) who are or might be interested in *learning* a conlang, rather than making one, together on a forum for that purpose. Kind of a virtual classroom where the coursework involves a conlang rather than German or Chinese.

I had also thought, though I may be wrong, that this is not just a one-off deal. In other words, if for example Verdurian were chosen in Sept., there's no reason the project couldn't start over with another language chosen by Sol Invictus.

Also, I don't see why from the outset several broad categories couldn't be set up (like "artlang, nonhuman", "artlang non-IE", "artlang-IE", "engelang", "loglang") -- something along those lines anyway -- so that people who are interested in one "type" of conlang over all others could band together and choose from offerings in those categories. That way in stead of 100 people learning one language, we might have a more manageable "class size" of say 20 to 40 each learning a different language. That way, not only are more learners satisfied with more offerings, but also more conlangers are satisfied. And plus, the whole point of this exercise, more conlangs are being learned, used (and presumably critiqued from the *language user*'s point of view -- something that probably 99% of all conlangs never benefit from.

I think that would quell the competitive aspect as well as offer hope that, one of these days, one's language will eventually be chosen.

Padraic

> - Sai